musicians playing in canoes on the 100 Acres lake...
After a year of planning with the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Butler University Composer's Orchestra, artist Erin Elyse Burns and others, my big site-specific music event Hungry Ghosts took place on September 20th. For the event, I had 20 musicians playing on shore around the lake at the IMA's sculpture park lake, and 10 musicians plus myself in canoes playing on the water. As the music and twilight came to a close, over 100 lanterns were released onto the water. To see some great pictures that the museum posted of the lantern-making workshop, the musical performance, and the release of the lanterns, have a look at the museum's Flickr page for the event. Click here if you'd like to have a look at the score, and you can also see some videos of the event below.
Overall I feel like the response couldn't have been better. There were news stories like this one in the Indy Star leading up to the event, and an interview on the local NPR station. Coupled with the perfect (and dry) weather, the turnout was absolutely immense - far larger than anyone expected. I had a radio with me in the canoe to communicate with museum staff, and halfway through the music I had to turn it off because there was so much chatter amongst the staff about people trying to park in strange places and traffic from people trying to get into the event spilling out onto the streets and snarling traffic. People of all walks of life came out for the event, which was reassuring, and I feel proves that if given the opportunity and are actually told about an event (in this case through extensive media coverage), they will choose things of substance and meaning.
The musicians played extraordinarily well - I couldn't have been more pleased. The directors of the ensemble - Michael Schelle and Frank Felice did a fantastic job rehearsing them for an entire month before the event (what a luxury!), so they were all really well prepared. One hilarious thing was that after the event lots of people talked about the 'disruption' of other sounds - the jets flying overhead, crickets, fish jumping - and complained that the music needed to be louder. But to me, people noticing these sounds and events happening was perhaps the most notable sign of success: people were listening and living actively in the moment. How could I organize an outdoor concert on a lake surrounded by woods and not expect to have other sounds intermingling? In its sonic totality, the evening sounded exactly how I wanted it to.
The musicians played extraordinarily well - I couldn't have been more pleased. The directors of the ensemble - Michael Schelle and Frank Felice did a fantastic job rehearsing them for an entire month before the event (what a luxury!), so they were all really well prepared. One hilarious thing was that after the event lots of people talked about the 'disruption' of other sounds - the jets flying overhead, crickets, fish jumping - and complained that the music needed to be louder. But to me, people noticing these sounds and events happening was perhaps the most notable sign of success: people were listening and living actively in the moment. How could I organize an outdoor concert on a lake surrounded by woods and not expect to have other sounds intermingling? In its sonic totality, the evening sounded exactly how I wanted it to.
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